The Marketing Diagnostic Roadmap
Find out what to fix next for the greatest revenue impact.
Most stalled revenue isn't a tactic problem. It's four systems that were never built to work together — and one of them is failing before the others get a chance. In a single working session, we score all four and tell you which one to fix first.
Why companies book this
You've spent real money on marketing. It isn't producing what you thought it would.
01
You're paying for tools that were supposed to solve this. Most of them are half-configured and none of them talk to each other.
02
Referrals close easily. Anyone who finds you cold takes months, or never converts at all.
03
You can't answer where your last ten opportunities actually came from — not with confidence.
04
There are leads in your CRM nobody has touched in ninety days, and no one is quite sure whose job that was.
05
Every few months someone recommends a new channel. You try it. It joins the pile of things that sort of worked.
06
You have a marketing plan. When you look closely, it's a list of activities with dates attached — not a strategy.
Adding a tool or a tactic to broken marketing doesn't fix bad marketing. It just lets you do bad marketing faster.
The Combustion Marketing Framework
Combustion needs four things at once. So does marketing.
Fuel, a spark, oxygen, and something to contain and shape it. Remove any one and there's no fire — just materials sitting next to each other. Every company we assess has some version of all four. Almost none of them have four that work together.
The spark
Message
How you describe what you do, to whom, and why it matters. Clear, not clever. If a stranger has to work to understand you, they won't.
Can a prospect tell in five seconds that you solve their problem?
The fuel
Offer
Something worth responding to that's smaller than hiring you. The value should be so far above the cost that saying no feels foolish.
What can someone say yes to today that isn't "contact us"?
The oxygen
Funnel
A repeatable path that builds familiarity and trust — because nobody buys from a stranger, and nobody buys until they believe you can actually help.
Could you draw the path from stranger to customer on one page?
The containment
Follow-Up
Speed and sequence after the lead arrives. This is where most revenue is lost — quietly, by people who are simply busy.
How long until someone responds, and who decided that?
What happens in the session
Four steps. One answer.
This is a working session, not a presentation. Preston asks questions, you answer them, and the scoring happens in front of you.
01
We score all four
A structured set of questions across Message, Offer, Funnel, and Follow-Up. Each pillar ends up red, yellow, or green. The point isn't the grade — it's that the conversation is now about evidence instead of opinion.
02
We find the furthest-upstream red
Not the worst score. The earliest one. A broken message makes a healthy funnel look like it's failing, and companies spend years rebuilding the wrong thing because of it.
03
You leave with one thing to fix
One constraint, not a list of twelve. Fix three things simultaneously and you learn nothing about which one mattered. You'll know what to do next and why it comes first.
04
You decide what happens next
Some companies take the roadmap and execute it themselves — that's a legitimate outcome and it happens often. If you'd rather we handle it, we'll talk about that separately. Not during the session.
Before you apply
What this is, and what it isn't.
What you get
- A scored diagnostic across all four pillars of your marketing system
- The single highest-leverage thing to fix first, and the reasoning behind why it comes before the others
- A clear read on which of your existing tools and spend are actually doing work
- Roughly 60 minutes with Preston directly — not a strategist, not an account manager
- Everything above whether or not you ever become a client
What it isn't
- A sales call with a diagnostic wrapped around it
- A full audit — this identifies the constraint, it doesn't rebuild the system
- A proposal presentation. If there's a fit, that's a separate conversation on a separate day
- A template report. Nothing is generated in advance; the scoring happens live, from your answers
- A fit for pre-revenue companies or anyone without marketing already running
From a client
"I'm doing things I should have done 35 years ago because of this program."Manufacturing company owner · Combustion Marketing Accelerator Lab
Who runs the session
Preston Bowman
Preston has run Stone Creek Consulting with his wife Melanie since 2001 — a two-person firm, no account managers, no handoffs. He started in radio at fourteen and was running a station by seventeen, selling ads business to business with a boombox. The marketing came first; the technology came later.
That order still shapes the work. Most firms lead with a tool and reverse-engineer a strategy to justify it. Stone Creek starts with the system and lets the tools follow.
- 2001Founded Stone Creek Consulting. Still owner-operated, still two people.
- StoryBrandCertified Guide for five years. Messaging is where every engagement starts.
- HubSpotAmong the first twenty partners worldwide when the partner program launched.
- VelocityCertified Fractional Revenue Executive, embedded as Director of Revenue in founder-led companies.
- CMALCreator of the Combustion Marketing Accelerator Lab, a guided six-week implementation of the framework.
Apply
Apply for a diagnostic session.
We take a limited number of these each month and we read every application. The questions below take about three minutes and they're the same ones we'd ask in the first ten minutes anyway — answering them now means the session starts with substance instead of background.
We review applications within two business days and reply either way. We don't share your information, and submitting this doesn't add you to a list.